About a year ago, I gave a free trial lesson to a prospective student at my home studio while his mother sat in on the lesson.
No more than 10 minutes in she told me that she hated having too many piano books around the house, so would buy the grade books off Amazon, photocopy them, and return them for a refund.
I was quite shocked that she’d said this to a music teacher, and in front of a child, but I didn’t call her out on it.
I did in fact go on to send her my teaching contract, but when she queried it, I got the feeling she was just going to be a headache, so wrote back to her saying I wouldn’t be able to offer her son lessons after all.
This obviously ticked her off, as a year down the line, any recommendations as a teacher I get on Facebook, the mum leaves a comment on that post saying ‘absolutely not!’
It is such a vague comment I worry it could conjure up all sorts of horrors from any parent looking for a teacher for their child.
This is really irking me. And I actually think it’s very damaging to my teaching reputation as I live in a rural community.
I’m not going to engage with her online as that’ll just be feeding the fire.
What would you do?